MTA board members criticize 'precarious' budget amid fare hike fight

Controversial fare hikes are making MTA board officials apprehensive about passing a tough budget with service cuts. (Susan Watts / New York Daily News)

Controversial fare hikes are making MTA board officials apprehensive about passing a tough budget loaded with service cuts.

In a rare move, members of the MTA board's finance committee have declined to recommend that the full board pass the budget when it comes up for a vote Wednesday, because it contains proposed fare and toll increases that are far from certain.

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The cause of board members’ concern against supporting the $17 billion budget is an assumption that nearly $270 million from fare and toll hikes next year will fill MTA coffers, even though elected officials like Gov. Cuomo, who controls the MTA, oppose the increases.

The fare hike vote is in January.

“We have to approve a budget that assumes a fare increase that the board members haven't voted on yet," City Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, an MTA board member, said after the meeting. "At least in any time since I’ve been on the board, I've never heard the governor say he opposed it before. This time, he does.”

Other members of the MTA board, mainly those appointed by Mayor de Blasio, felt uneasy about a budget that assumes fare and toll hikes that they have yet to authorize.

MTA board member Carl Weisbrod — the mayor’s former city planner — called the transportation authority’s budget “particularly precarious” because of the “uncertainty about a fare increase, where many members of this board, many elected officials have said publicly that they are opposed to a fare increase or wish to delay a fare increase.”

The MTA budget vote is months earlier than budget votes at the state and city — two critical funders of the agency.

Lawmakers for the state and city next year will be considering new ways to fund the MTA — with a congestion pricing plan in Manhattan the most discussed policy.

MTA board member Larry Schwartz, a rep for the governor, said he had issues with fare and toll increases, but pressed his colleagues to move forward with the budget.

“I don't want to throw a $17 billion budget for better or worse, under the bus so to speak, no MTA pun intended,” Schwartz said.

The MTA board has two proposals from agency staff they can follow to increase fares — one plan that keeps the base fare at $2.75, cuts the MetroCard bonus, and raises the 30-day unlimited pass to $127. The other proposal raises the base fare to $3 while increasing the round-trip bonus to 10%, and raises the 30-day unlimited pass to $126.25. Both plans raise the seven-day unlimited to $33.